“Well, plain speaking is best, Master.  If you were to come here and see Kilmeny often she’d most likely come to think too much of you.  I mistrust there’s some mischief done in that direction already.  Then when you went away she might break her heart—­for she is one of those who feel things deeply.  She has been happy enough.  I know folks condemn us for the way she has been brought up, but they don’t know everything.  It was the best way for her, all things considered.  And we don’t want her made unhappy, Master.”

“But I love your niece and I want to marry her if I can win her love,” said Eric steadily.

He surprised them out of their self possession at last.  Both started, and looked at him as if they could not believe the evidence of their ears.

“Marry her!  Marry Kilmeny!” exclaimed Thomas Gordon incredulously.  “You can’t mean it, sir.  Why, she is dumb—­Kilmeny is dumb.”

“That makes no difference in my love for her, although I deeply regret it for her own sake,” answered Eric.  “I can only repeat what I have already said, Mr. Gordon.  I want Kilmeny for my wife.”

The older man leaned forward and looked at the floor in a troubled fashion, drawing his bushy eyebrows down and tapping the calloused tips of his fingers together uneasily.  He was evidently puzzled by this unexpected turn of the conversation, and in grave doubt what to say.

“What would your father say to all this, Master?” he queried at last.

“I have often heard my father say that a man must marry to please himself,” said Eric, with a smile.  “If he felt tempted to go back on that opinion I think the sight of Kilmeny would convert him.  But, after all, it is what I say that matters in this case, isn’t it, Mr. Gordon?  I am well educated and not afraid of work.  I can make a home for Kilmeny in a few years even if I have to depend entirely on my own resources.  Only give me the chance to win her—­that is all I ask.”

“I don’t think it would do, Master,” said Thomas Gordon, shaking his head.  “Of course, I dare say you—­you”—­he tried to say “love,” but Scotch reserve balked stubbornly at the terrible word—­“you think you like Kilmeny now, but you are only a lad—­and lads’ fancies change.”

“Mine will not,” Eric broke in vehemently.  “It is not a fancy, Mr. Gordon.  It is the love that comes once in a lifetime and once only.  I may be but a lad, but I know that Kilmeny is the one woman in the world for me.  There can never be any other.  Oh, I’m not speaking rashly or inconsiderately.  I have weighed the matter well and looked at it from every aspect.  And it all comes to this—­I love Kilmeny and I want what any decent man who loves a woman truly has the right to have—­the chance to win her love in return.”

“Well!” Thomas Gordon drew a long breath that was almost a sigh.  “Maybe—­if you feel like that, Master—­I don’t know—­there are some things it isn’t right to cross.  Perhaps we oughtn’t—­Janet, woman, what shall we say to him?”